CockroachDB

Course Objectives:

• Gain a comprehensive understanding of CockroachDB's distributed SQL architecture and how it achieves survivability, consistency, and scale.

• Master the deployment, configuration, and day-to-day operation of CockroachDB clusters.

• Confidently design schemas, optimize queries, and manage transactions in a distributed SQL environment.

• Implement multi-region topologies, geo-partitioning, and resilience strategies for production workloads.

• Apply security hardening, monitoring, and integration best practices for production-ready CockroachDB deployments.

Course Length: 3 Days

Course Structure:

Module 1: Architecture & Foundations

• Introduction to CockroachDB

  • What CockroachDB is: a distributed SQL database built for survivability

  • Comparison landscape: CockroachDB vs. PostgreSQL, Spanner, YugabyteDB, TiDB

  • Use cases and when CockroachDB is the right fit

• Core Architecture

  • Ranges, Raft consensus, leaseholders, and the distributed storage layer

  • The KV layer and how SQL maps onto it

  • Multi-active availability vs. traditional primary/replica models

  • Node communication, gossip protocol, and cluster membership

• Installation, Configuration & Tooling

  • Deploying a local multi-node cluster (cockroach start, cockroach demo)

  • DB Console walkthrough: metrics, jobs, statements, sessions

  • CockroachDB's PostgreSQL wire-protocol compatibility — what works, what doesn't

• SQL Dialect & Schema Design

  • SQL dialect specifics: SERIAL vs. UUID, sequences, hash-sharded indexes

  • Schema design fundamentals: choosing primary keys to avoid hotspots

  • Data types, constraints, and indexing strategies

Module 2: Distributed Operations & Data Engineering

• Transactions & Consistency

  • Transaction model: serializable isolation by default

  • MVCC, read/write intents, transaction contention and retries

  • Follower reads, AS OF SYSTEM TIME, and stale read trade-offs

• Query Optimization

  • EXPLAIN / EXPLAIN ANALYZE for query analysis

  • Index selection, statistics collection, and cost-based optimization

  • Common anti-patterns: sequential keys, cross-range transactions, implicit transactions

• Multi-Region Topologies & Resilience

  • Replication zones and zone configurations

  • Geo-partitioned tables, regional by row, global tables

  • Multi-region cluster topologies: survival goals (zone vs. region)

  • Node decommissioning, rebalancing, and recovery

• Backup, Restore & Change Data Capture

  • Full, incremental, and scheduled backups (BACKUP/RESTORE, cloud storage)

  • Restore strategies and point-in-time recovery

  • Changefeeds for CDC (Kafka, webhook, cloud pub/sub sinks)

Module 3: Operations, Security & Production Readiness

• Security & Access Control

  • TLS/SSL configuration for node-to-node and client-to-node communication

  • Authentication methods: password, certificate, SCRAM, SSO/OIDC

  • Role-based access control (RBAC), grants, row-level security

  • Audit logging and encryption at rest

• Monitoring & Troubleshooting

  • Key DB Console dashboards and metrics to monitor

  • Prometheus/Grafana integration and alerting strategies

  • Statement diagnostics, slow query identification, contention dashboards

  • Log analysis, debug zip, and working with Cockroach Labs support

• Schema Migrations & Deployment Models

  • Online schema changes and how they differ from PostgreSQL

  • CockroachDB Serverless vs. Dedicated vs. Self-Hosted — when to use what

• Application Integration Patterns

  • CockroachDB with ORMs (SQLAlchemy, GORM, Prisma)

  • Connection pooling and application-level retry logic

  • Integrating CockroachDB with CI/CD and infrastructure automation workflows